Microsoft has announced some new bundle options for the sale of Office 2007 (due early next year).
Microsoft has announced some new bundle options for the sale of Office 2007 (due early next year). These announcements affect OEM sales of Office, in other words when you buy Office with a new computer (OEM = Original Equipment Manufacturer).
At present, OEM’s are not allowed to sell the Office 2003 Student and Teacher Edition, even though it is sold in retail stores. We’ve talked many times before about how, despite the name, the S & T edition is effectively available to all comers.
While OEM’s can offer Office Basic for about the price of the Student and Teacher edition, the latter is better value because it includes Powerpoint. Office Professional costs a lot more. While some people have bought from their OEM, the existence of the Student and Teachers edition has cut into the lucrative ‘add-on’ sales by OEM’s.
As one OEM manager commented to us ” The so-called ‘Student and Teacher edition’ has gradually cut into our MS Office sales, as word spreads about the better value at Circuit City or Amazon’.
So Office 2007 will have the equivalent of Student and Teacher edition available via OEM’s except it will be called ‘Home and Student’ edition. Since this edition will continue offer a license to run on 3 computers, its yet to be explained how Office 2007 can be installed on the other two computers. Either a CD will be supplied, the user is prompted to make their own CD or installation can be done over a network share.
OEM’s will also be able to offer a 60 day free trial version of Office 2007 in their pre-installed computers, presumably this will be similar to the downloadable trial of MS Office already available. The key difference for the computer makers comes if the customer chooses to convert Office 2007 from a trial version to a normal fully paid version. The customer will be directed back to the OEM’s web site for the purchase. This is important for PC makers because they don’t want to lose the follow-up sale.
